LUSATIA (German, Lausitz) is a common name applied to two neighbouring districts in Germany, Lusatia Superior and Lusatia Inferior (Oberlausitz and Niederlausitz), belonging in part to Prussia and in part to Saxony. The country now known as Upper Lusatia was occupied in the 7th century by the Milcieni, a Slavonic tribe. In the 10th century it was annexed to the German kingdom by the margraves of Meissen, and from this time for several centuries it was called Budissin (Bautzen), from the name of the principal fortress. In the 11th and 12th centuries Budissin changed hands several times, being connected at different periods with Meissen, Poland, and Bohemia. The emperor Frederick I. granted it in 1158 to King Ladislaus of Bohemia, and under him and his immediate successors it was largely colonized by German immigrants. Between 1253 and 1319 it belonged to Brandenburg, to the margrave of which it was given in pledge by Ring Ottocar II. of Bohemia; and in 1268 it was divided into an eastern and a western part—Budissin proper and Görlitz. In 1319 Budissin proper was restored to Bohemia, which also recovered Görlitz in 1346. It was during this period that the fortunes of Budissin were associated with those of the country afterwards called Lower Lusatia, but originally Lusatia. It was inhabited by a Slavonic tribe, the Lusici, and reached in the earliest times from the Black Elster to the Spree. The Lusici were conquered by Margrave Gero in 963, and their land was soon formed into a separate march, sometimes attached to, sometimes independent of, the march of Meissen. In 1303 it passed, as Budissin had done, to Brandenburg, and in 1373, after several changes, it fell into the hands of the emperor Charles IV. as king of Bohemia. During the Hussite wars the people of Lusatia ...